Pine

Pine is different from your typical world-conquering quest. It's more like an interactive story in a world very different from our own. There are mysteries to discover and tasks to be completed. But most importantly - the world keeps going on around you - regardless of how much or little you accomplish. The world is definitely affected by your actions, but your actions do not drive the world. You're just a tiny pebble in the grand scheme of things.
If you like being the underdog and can appreciate being kind of helpless (to start, at least) because humanity never reached alpha tier, then working your way to being decent, you'll like Pine.
If you like exploring and puzzles (and can note things down to come back for later), you'll like Pine.
If you like watching the world "happen" without you, you'll like Pine.
If you want human domination and crushing populations, you're in for a challenge, so not sure you'll like Pine.
If you need deep/complex mechanics, you may not like Pine - it's made to be easy to play, so while there's a range of mechanics (crafting, armor, weapons, quests, puzzles) none of them are super deep. Personally I like that my daughter who has little RPG experience can play Pine without getting overwhelmed.
Definitely watch gameplay videos and video reviews to get a feel for it. For me, I find it refreshing. The attention to details like footstep noises and environmental sounds really enhance the "lost in the woods" and "stranger in a strange world" feeling that is part of the fundamental storyline. Remember too that this is a team of LESS THAN 10 who made this game, and in my opinion, it's quite the feat. I look forward to what this studio brings in the future!

I liked almost everything about the game, but I'll say upfront that the combat is insanely frustrating. Your character is totally unresponsive during every single attack animation, and for a second or so afterwards. You can't start another attack, you can barely turn as enemies dance around and through you, you can't heal, you can't change what you're doing until that animation is done and you're back in idle. Enemies seem far more agile than you, and I constantly found myself clicking or pressing buttons to do things in combat only for my character to finish an animation and do nothing. I was constantly getting killed and having to reload. It wasn't until the very end of the game, with top-tier gear, that I started to feel like combat was bearable.
So that's a big caveat. But if you can deal with that, there's a lot to love about Pine. The world design is gorgeous and beautiful, and the only problem with it is there's no button to hide the UI to take pretty screenshots - I constantly wanted to, especially when the sunlight or moonlight hit the terrain in the right way. The character and creature designs are a nice balance of cartoony and detailed. The different armor you can craft looks really neat (too bad the tier system forces you you upgrade to a single top-tier set that looks a bit bland compared to the rest). Visually, this is a great game. The music is fitting too. Even the story, though simple, is slightly different to what you'd expect; it's not about conquering the island, it really isn't, and it shouldn't be. That would be the same boring kind of crap that's been done a million times, so I'm glad they went another way with the ending.
And the faction system is really interesting; the ways you're able to push different species out and make room for other ones, and manipulate conflicts by weakening or strengthening different villages, poisoning people, laying traps, and starting raids, is super fun to play around with. The only issue is that feedback isn't very strong, but that's the kind of thing I could imagine a sequel doing way better. The crafting and gathering system is simple enough that it isn't overwhelming; it's a bit grindy, but less so than other games I've played, and really most resource systems are grindy anyway.
It's too bad the cool toys involving the faction system only appear later in the game, and that factions become increasingly difficult to change your allegiance with over time; I wish you got more of those options from the start, and that it didn't become impossible difficult to rebuild your rep with a faction by the endgame, but it was still fun as it is.
Long story short, Pine has a lot of cool ideas, if - and it's a big if - you can get some of the most inexplicably self-sabotaging combat I've played in years. You can avoid melee combat if you're careful with traps, ranged weapons, and explosives, but there's no getting around the fact that melee sometimes just happens, and it's going to suck. I still enjoyed my time with it overall, once I built up a tolerance and avoidance mechanisms, and better gear, but I wish the combat were better, so I could recommend this more wholeheartedly and enthusiastically.

I beat this game. Playing it via steam link on my TV. Works well with a controller. The game is a good RPG, big world to explore, and has a nice story line. It is lacking side quests to give it more replay. The game plays like an MMO, in the sense that if you drop an item it'll disappear on next game play, or resources respawn that you are going after to craft something. This is because the NPC's are actively fighting each other and taking over villages and trading items. It took me a while to realize that as your playing you just donate to the race you want to do the next quest in to keep it going, and by doing that the other races will not like you. The main story is interesting enough to keep you engaged and the puzzles are easy but feel rewarding.
Pine is a casual RPG, it reminds me of older RPGs. like Zelda pre BOTW or Fable etc. Comparing it to Skyrim or Witcher other AAA RPGs isn't fair. Keep in mind this game was made by a very small team, and I would say it is well worth buying and playing if your looking for a Light RPG. I did not encounter any bugs. Any issues I had was due to misreading quest text lol.
Graphically it's pretty, the controls work well and are polished. the combat is basic and easy to understand. There is no "gold" in the game you trade items you find around, which are everywhere.
At the time of writing this there was an exploit where if you want a specific resource, you would find the spawn location of it, mark it on your map, save and reload the game go to the marked location and it would have respawned. Save and repeat to get as many as you needed. This exploit clearly isn't how the game is meant to be played but it did allow me to get max gear and max weapons very easy and made it less grindy to me.

Initially this game is really nice and pleasant to play, with an interesting trading system and very pleasant cartoon style graphics. It's really open world and your character can jump up hills and swim through water, there are no boundaries or invisible walls to your exploring. There are also lots of ingredients and recipes to find and an interesting combat system, you are far better to let the other factions do your fighting for you and just reap the rewards, especially in the beginning when your gear is low tier. The only levelling system in the game is levelling your gear from 1 star to 5 stars. I did miss being able to put points into stats and abilities. As I progressed in the game however I did struggle somewhat with some of the quests which bugged out on me a few times. Sometimes they would be fixed by a simple reload of a save and other times I’d have to revert back to previous saves and replay small chunks of the game. The dungeon puzzles were problematic for me causing huge levels of annoyance and stress especially as there isn’t much on this game on the internet.
I think this game is worth trying at a cheap price, I loved some aspects and some aspects not so much. But well done to the young fellas who made this. Better than I could do that's for sure! :D

So my honest opinion of this game is that it has some issues, and a few serious bugs that need to be addressed soon.
Pros:
-Enjoyable story line
-Unique World
-Faction system
-Puzzles
-Gear Crafting / Item gathering
Cons:
-No puzzle ever stays "Completed"
-Dying rolls you back to last save / but also doesn't.. (Which sounds weird but, dying feels like things go missing. You're also placed in a completely new location upon loading a save.)
-The Many Turns quest door consumes the quest item, which prevents you from ever entering the cave again.
-Achievements that should be easy to acquire seem almost impossible to complete due to issues and or bugs.
-Combat is made to give the AI a superior advantage over you. There is never a point in the game where you are stronger than any one faction, ie numbers, gear, combo moves, fighting style. (Which is what the story tells you), but it feels like at a certain point You should be able to at least hold your own against numerous enemies.
-Insane Frame rate loss and or Packet drops. It just feels clanky all the time.
That being said I do recommend the game, however keep in mind the constant struggle, the dropped frames and the constant bugs. The story is enjoyable the world is beautiful and for the most part if you can push all the problems to the back of your mind the game is fun.

This is a decent game, not amazing but worth a play.
Some things you should know going in:
Game play length: ~20 hours if you don't rush or drag your feet. You can continue after the game's end to try and finish the puzzles and find all the goodies.
Plot and goals: This story is about finding a home for your people, NOT about getting them a home and then dealing with the politics of your people and the other races. You won't be supplying or building up your race's resources. I would have preferred an extended game past the point you rehome your people where you can help them build stuff up and improve relations with others. Alas, that's not in this game.
Other race's politics: Getting in the good graces of each race is helpful in not being harassed by their people, but you don't need to be on every race's good side at the same time. It would, in fact, be quite difficult to garner that many resources, as improving relations with one race decreases your standing with all other races. So don't worry about getting all your standings above "hostile" just befriend a race or two that help you in that time frame.
Combat: It's... kinda clunky, unfortunately. The first couple shields are rather slow to wield and there is no way to interrupt an attack with a block. That makes combat a bit of a nuisance at times, as the character feels a bit unresponsive to sudden changes in the combat situation. Even the best shield is still not as quick as I'd like. Some races spam enough ranged attacks (I'm looking at you, foxy b*stards) to be obnoxious in combat with more than 2 attackers at once. Fortunately, you can kite enemy into different enemy to distract them with fighting each other. Combat would have been greatly improved with a speedier dodge and the ability to cancel your actions.
General tips:
Collect any blue orb on a pedestal you see as soon as you find them. These are used to increase your inventory and the carry limit is really small when you start.
When picking up stuff, hold the pickup button AND a directional button to quickly grab things off the ground. Otherwise it's a slow process.
I'd suggest going after the taming artifact first, as it allows you to ride the deerlephant creatures and increase your travel speed a decent amount.
When you're told to choose among the races to ally with at the meeting table, clicking on anything there picks that race, IT DOES NOT allow you to read up on them or give a "are you sure?" prompt. So either save right before you pick or look really carefully at the tiny flags on the table to be sure to pick the race you want.
Beagalite is an end game item crafting resource that can be a nuisance to get enough of. Unlike other resources, it's rare and spawns all over the map almost always one per spot. The cheater's way of fixing this is to go to the one place in the mountains where two beagalite spawn, collect them, save the game, and reload. On restarting, the beagalite will have respawned.
Similarly, going in and out of caves respawns resource boxes. So if you want a lot of arrows, go in and out of a cave with arrow boxes near the entrance and get your fill of broadheads.
---------------- TLDR -------------------
Decent game. Some quirks. Worth a play, though. 7/10 would keep eyes out for an improved sequel.

Imagine if Breath of the Wild and Fable had am adorable fur baby. This is that baby.
A must have if you enjoy immersive exploration, adorable animals, great visuals and quite calming and relaxing music.
Combat can be somewhat janky at times.. But other than that, I recommend it to all RPG lovers :)